Turning to our preoccupation with politics, we find another field that is all but fallow. Few novels of any real dignity may be tendered as exhibits in this department, and these are in a sense local--the comprehensive, the deeply searching, has yet to be done. Mr. Churchill’s _Coniston_, and Mr. Brand Whitlock’s _The Thirteenth District_ are the happiest experiments I recall, though possibly there are others of equal importance. Yet politics is not only a matter of constant discussion in every quarter, but through and by politics many thousands solve the problem of existence. Alone of great national capitals Washington has never been made the scene of a novel of distinction. Years ago we had Mrs. Burnett’s _Through One Administration_, but it failed to establish itself as a classic. George Meredith would have found much in Washington life upon which to exercise his ironic powers. With all our romantic longings it is little short of amazing that we are not more fecund in schemes for romantic drama and fiction. The stage, not to say the market, waits; but the settings are dingy from much use and the characters in threadbare costumes strut forth to speak old familiar lines. Again, there is an old superstition that we are a humorous people, and yet humor is curiously absent from recent fiction. “O. Henry” knew the way to the fountain of laughter, but contented himself with the shorter form; _Huckleberry Finn_ seems destined to stand as our nearest approach to a novel of typical humor. We have had David Harums and Mrs. Wiggses a-plenty--kindly philosophers, often drawn with skill--but the results are character sketches, not novels. III It is impossible in a general view of our fiction to dissociate the novel from the short story, which, in a way, has sapped its vitality. An astonishing number of short stories have shown a grasp of the movement, energy, and color of American life, but writers who have succeeded in this field have seemed incapable of longer flight. And the originality possessed by a great number of short-story writers seems to be shared only meagrely by those who experiment with the novel. When some venturesome Martian explores the Library of Congress it may be that in the short-story division he will find the surest key to what American life has been. There are few American novels of any period that can tip the scale against the twenty best American short stories, chosen for sincerity and workmanship. It would seem that our creative talent is facile and true in miniature studies, but shrinks from an ampler canvas and a broader brush. Frank Norris’s _The Pit_ and _The Octopus_ continue to command respect from the fact that he had a panoramic sense that led him to exercise his fine talents upon a great and important theme.